1. Field of the Invention
.beta.-Ketoalcohols are useful compounds as precursors for pharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals. For instance, a chiral 1,3-diol can be obtained by asymmetric reduction of a .beta.-ketoalcohol, and positioned as an important intermediate for various optically active compounds.
The present invention concerns a process for producing a .beta.-ketoalcohol.
A .beta.-ketoalcohol is generally obtained easily by the aldol condensation of the corresponding ketone or aldehyde. With respect to primary alcohols out of .beta.-ketoalcohols, however, no simple and inexpensive synthetic processes have been known yet. I.e., indeed there are for example, a method of selectively oxidizing one of the two hydroxyl groups of a diol (K.S. Kim et al., Synthesis, (11), 1017(1987)), and another method of reducing the corresponding ketocarboxylic acid (K. Isobe et al., Chem. Pharm. Bull., 34(7), 3029 (1986)), but such methods are complicated processes and are difficult to use industrially.